Hello, I am Stephanie Reynolds, an English Teacher in charge of the Advanced Reading & Writing courses at Hakusanroku campus. On Wednesday, June 18th, 2025, 5 international exchange students from Columbia, Missouri, USA joined my 1st year International College of Technology-Kanazawa (ICT) Advanced Reading & Writing IA class. The class typically has five students, so the American students and ICT students were perfectly matched 1-to-1 as partners for the class activities. 

 We began the class by discussing what both the ICT students and American students have been reading recently, in addition to the ICT students updating their reading logs. Over the 15-week semester, students in the Advanced Reading & Writing IA class are expected to log a minimum of 8 hours of free, independent reading time. They can include the time spent reading during learning sessions and other classes, as long as the content is in English. It was exciting and motivating to hear what others have been reading and what they thought about their chosen texts.

 The next activity involved reviewing vocabulary and reading a 2-page article about the history and development of plastics. Students worked together with their partners to answer reading comprehension questions and practice the target skill of using inference to answer questions that are not directly addressed in the text.

 The final task was a grammar exercise, in which all students answered a list of 10 questions and made sentences using the habitual past forms used to and would. The challenge was to decide when to use each type of form and how to adapt the forms to negative statements. The activity was written first, then students stood up and shared their sentences with one another while mingling in the classroom.

 It was a wonderful opportunity to exchange language and cultural knowledge between ICT and American students. In the future, hopefully we can continue our exchange through writing emails and developing a deeper connection as pen pals.

Stephanie Reynolds

 Hello. My name is Haru Abe, a 1st year student living on the Hakusanroku campus. In June 2025, five high school students from Columbia city in America visited Hakusanroku campus. This time, I will write about what I feel about living with them in ICT as study abroad buddies.

 On June 7th, American students arrived at Hakusanroku campus. All the students are tall, and I was surprised by how mature they look. I was a little nervous because it was my first time meeting American students, and I couldn’t talk with them in English. But American students talked with me, perhaps because they were interested in Japan. Therefore, I was able to ease my tension. With the American students, I was able to have a lively conversation about Japanese, overseas animation, and sports.

 Every after school, we played basketball together. When I saw the tall American student dunk, I was surprised. After that, because he also plays American football, he taught me how to play it. But that was very difficult, and I can’t throw as far as he does. Also, after that we went to the onsen.

 For sightseeing in Kanazawa, we went to Kenroku Garden. I haven’t gone sightseeing in Kanazawa, so I’m not very sure about it. But I taught American students how to buy some food in shops, and because of that, I think that I fulfilled my buddy duties.

 At the time, I didn’t have confidence, and I was nervous because I wanted to improve my English skills. Also, I want to be able to talk more with native speakers at the next opportunity. See you again!

 Hello again! This is Sade Moore, a Learning Mentor at the Hakusanroku Campus! From Saturday, June 7th, 2025, International College of Technology (ICT) has had the pleasure of hosting a delegation of 5 high school students from Columbia, Missouri, United States at the Hakusanroku Campus. Along with two teachers from Columbia they have been participating in classes at the Hakusanroku Campus with our students and also various activities in and around Hakusan City and Kanazawa City. To facilitate welcoming them to our school the Learning Mentors decided to have a quick Ice Breaking Session for the students during the beginning of Learning Session on Monday, June 9th. 

 At the beginning of Learning Session, we gathered all of the students together in the Math Classroom. We started with normal announcements for our students to tell them about their necessary assignments and homework and any events that are going to happen soon and after the announcements the fun could begin! First, to wake up the students and let everyone loosen up, the Learning Mentors decided to play a game as most of the students seemed sleepy and not interested.

 The first ice breaker that we played is called “Fruit Basket.” It is a game where all the students sit in a circle and one student is in the middle. The student in the middle has to say, in English, something that pertains to them. It can be anything like what food they like, what color they like, what pet they have, or what class they like. After the student says the statement, then for the students who have the same answer, they must get up and move to a different chair. For students who say things like “my favorite color is pink” or “I have a pet fish” not many students can say the same so not many students move. But for statements like “I am a human” or “I like animals” or “Fruits Basket (where all the students have to move chairs)”, it can cause a lot of chaos as most students have to move to a different seat! The students had a lot of fun trying to find a new chair and not be the student left in the middle.

 At the ICT Hakusanroku Campus we have implemented a House System where all of the students are separated into 4 separate houses. The students have to work together with their Housemates to collect points based off of good behavior, such as doing their homework, completing assignments, helping their other classmates, and cleaning up after themselves. They can also lose points if they behave badly, for example, if they are being too loud during Learning Session, not completing assignments, not cleaning up after themselves, and not acting in an appropriate manner. To help integrate the American students into ICT, the Learning Mentors thought it would be a good idea to sort the American students into one of the 4 ICT Houses. So, we held a quick sorting ceremony for them and they were quickly welcomed into their houses by their ICT house members. 

 With the sorting done this led into our final ice breaking activity of the night where we would play English-only Charades. In a usual game of charades there are only gestures used to try and guess a secret word. However, today for charades the students must give hints in English only as to what the secret word was. Each house had to work together to give the best hints so that their teammate could guess correctly as fast as possible. The first House to guess correctly would receive 20 House Points, 2nd fastest would get 15 House Points, 3rd would get 10 House Points, and the last team to guess the answer would get 5 House Points. The students really enjoyed working together to use their English in order to get as many points as possible!

 After English-only Charades the ICT students and the American students were all released to regular Learning Session to work on any assignments, homework, or presentations that they needed to get done or to get to know each other better if they had free time. It was really nice to see all of the students laughing and smiling together and crossing cultural barriers through the Ice Breaking Activity. It is the Learning Mentors’ hope that this will lead to good memories and a great start to good relations between our students and the students from Columbia. 

Sade Moore

 Hello, I am Shunta Tamura, a 1st year student. I learned many unknown and interesting things, when I communicated with American student. However, I am not good at English, so I had a hard time.
 First, the American students were very kind and funny! The most interesting part was about the favorite foods of American students. They were sushi, pizza, and many other foods, but the most surprising of all was that an American student said, “I like natto!”.
 The next thing that surprised me in my interactions with American students was that most of them were so tall. I am not very tall, so I envied them.
 Finally, unfortunately, I had some the difficulties in interacting with the American students. I am not very good at English, so it was very difficult for me to understand what they were saying. If I did understand them, I was also worried that they would not understand what I was saying. Luckily, I was happy because I had some good English conversations because I used English words and gestures to communicate what I couldn't tell. I am happy that I did not give up and continued talking because I could gradually understand what they were saying after talking with them every day.

Shunta Tamura 

 AI is a part of our everyday lives, encompassing chatbots, smart recommendations, and image generators, but do our students truly understand how it works?

 This is Apirak Sang-ngenchai, and I am teaching 2nd year students in the "Fundamentals of AI" class. In our class, we focus on an active learning approach that helps students understand the fundamental concepts behind AI through engaging with the topic. Instead of just listening to lectures, students explore the world of AI through a variety of fun, interactive activities.

 We started with the basic questions: What is AI? What is machine learning? And how can a computer see and recognize an object? Rather than explaining everything through slides, we used activities that sparked curiosity and brought these topics to life.

Here are some of the tools and activities we used:

• Chat with Eliza: A simple AI chatbot that mimics a therapist. This helped students understand rule-based AI and how early AI systems communicated with users, unlike ChatGPT or Co-pilot, which provide a smarter and more diverse range of information nowadays. It also led to fun and thoughtful conversations about how AI can seem “smart” even when it doesn’t really understand us.
  Link: https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html

• Google Quick, Draw: A game where students draw objects and the AI tries to guess what they’re drawing. This activity introduced the concept of unsupervised learning techniques and pattern recognition, showing how machines learn from massive amounts of human data.
  Link: https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/
  
  
• Teachable Machine: An easy-to-use website where students can train their image or human body key points recognition models. Students quickly grasped the idea of training data, labels, and model accuracy, as well as the concept of supervised learning techniques, while having fun with creative experiments.
  Link: https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/
  
  
• Google Colab Coding: We also introduced students to basic Python coding on Google Colab. They ran simple machine learning scripts, changed parameters, and observed how the results changed. This provided them with a hands-on introduction to machine learning algorithms without requiring a complex setup.
  Link: https://colab.google/

 Through these activities, students didn’t just learn about AI; they also gained practical experience. They experienced how it works. They learned that machines require training, that data is important, and that results aren’t always perfect. Active learning also helped create a lively classroom atmosphere where students helped each other, shared discoveries, and reflected together. In the end, they weren’t just learning about AI. They were learning how to learn actively, a skill that will be valuable across all disciplines no matter what the future brings.

Apirak Sang-ngenchai